> 1) Despite my not being a blonde mother from Connecticut, I am not in > this show's demographic.
Really lame and easily repeatable. And frankly a ripoff of Arsenio's Dogg Pound AKA "those people over there are ..." > 2) "Jimmy Slow Jams the News" sucked. Not so much Barry White as very white. > 3) Fallon doesn't seem to have a spontaneous bone in his body. The > advantage that guys like Dave, Conan, Craig, and even Jay have is > that, once they get to the desk, they can make it seem like they're > talking off the cuff -- even as they're working off of talking points. > Fallon feels locked onto the prompter and the blue cards like he's in > a tunnel. (Though he's gotten better at reading prompter.) And despite insistences that NBC would not allow The Roots to be playing music with publishing rights/fees. That rule was immediately broken with the DeNiro playover. And it highlighted the major problem I've had with DeNiro most of the last decade. Even with STELLAR MATERIAL ... dude ain't funny. [Putting DeNiro in a comedy is like having Leslie Nielsen work without the guys from Airplane (1), and the Police Squad (Naked Gun trilogy). And even that well is dry in the era of the insta-Genre movies.] > 4) Graphics are good -- except for his backdrop. Graphics and music felt like they had done their best to copy Carson Daly. And if that's the case, why not just move up Poker After Dark and be done with it. Let Conan and Leno exist in the new timeslots and let Daly go back to radio and let Jimmy ... I don't know ... panhandle? > 5) "Lick It for Ten" -- and a lof of the rest -- feels like something > a desperate host would have cooked up during a writer's strike; not > something that they've had months to prepare for. Kevin asked me (when I brought up the graphics package) if it seemed MTV on NBC. And "Lick It For $10" is MTV. It's just MTV Spring Break coverage. > 6) Lorne must have compromising photos of De Niro; he sure didn't seem > to want to be there. Well, they almost mentioned the Tribeca Film Festival. Sorta. But even with the joking of Questions That Only Require One Word Answers, DeNiro who didn't seem to be looking at either Jimmy or any camera in the building ... went off book and gave four word answers. And eventually as Fallon described DeNiro's weekend email session wanting to know more and more questions he'd be asked DeNiro noted "the questions kept getting worse" and "I didn't want to make it easy for you." Then again ... Bringing on Justin Timberlake to reminisce about his acting (in Fallon's "Barry Gibb Talk Show" sketch on SNL) and do completely uninspiring John Mayer and Michael McDonald impressions instead of singing wasted everyone's time. And really, Van Morrison is much more a Dave or Conan band. He seemed out of place on this Epic Fail. And it seems even more stale given Daly is shaking his own show up with half hour on location infomercials for emerging bands (and weird edgy camerawork during interviews.) Still not Later with Bob Costas, but 20 minutes on one subject in latenight on NBC is still better than Poker After Dark. > 7) Generally, the show feels to be neither fish nor fowl. It seems to > want to honor the classic traditions with the stage right side of the > set -- desk, announcer, backdrop -- while the stage left side -- non- > traditional band, two-story set -- wants to break new ground. I feel > like if it's going to be as newfangled as they seem to want to make > it, they should lose the traditional trappings and make it feel like > the 21st century equivalent of Dave's "Late Night" -- that the kids > snuck into the studio and turned the cameras on. The audience was incredibly well miced, so much so that if Katey Segal or Christina Applegate walked out onstage as guests there would be a "Married with Children" style OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH. The camera angles catching Jimmy seemed off. The staging seemed bizarre (Granted, it's not Conan's studio 8B not 8A as I recall) but they made it seem as though they had remodeled it ... poorly. > 8) I expect the show will improve -- it'd have to -- but so far, I can > smell the flop sweat. Highlight of the entire show was the passing of the torch as it were with "2 minutes to air" and Conan still packing up his belongings from his (now Jimmy's) dressing room. Jimmy asks "Hey, are you getting Leno's old dressing room in Los Angeles?" and Conan responds with a oained snarl, "JAY'S NOT LEAVING IT." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... Smart (TV) People on Ice! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
